Moonlighter

TL:DR Game is amazing but most of all the devs actually listen.
So here's a little story, I use a wheelchair, and I got the game and it was hard for me to play because you had to use J and K as action keys and those aren't easy for me to hit. so I contacted the devs and I was like is there any way to change this and they were like no sorry but you could try this program auto hotkey and change your mouse keys to be J and K. So I did that and it took a little bit to figure it out but it actually worked and I was able to play. Fast-forward 6 to 8 months I just fired the game up again after not playing for a while to find that there has been some amazing updates which include being able to bind the keys to your mouse keys including scroll wheel up and down, so if the devs actually read this thank you very much!! I would highly recommend this game to anyone if for no other reason that the devs are phenomenal.

🎤Introduction
Moonlighter is an intriguing title to say the least, who wouldn’t want to be a shopkeeper by day and a dungeon crawler by night? The first half is where this game shines the most, you’ll be exploring dungeons, fighting bosses whilst collecting materials to sell in your shop. However, the further that I progressed the more that the charm and novelty of being a shopkeeper and a dungeon crawler wore off.
✔️Pros
• Interesting hybrid of dungeon crawling and shopkeeping
• Bosses are interesting and diverse
• Each dungeon is varied and has a specific theme
• New game+ feature
• Pixel art is beautiful
❌Cons
• Combat is simplistic
• After awhile you’ll see the repetitiveness of the game through each dungeon
• Shopkeeping gets tedious and repetitive
• Final boss is a joke and not challenging at all
🕹Gameplay
The core mechanics that are presented aren’t anything new, you’ve probably played a game where you’re a shopkeeper or a dungeon explorer before. However, Moonlighter presents itself as a hybrid between the two that creates a rather unique and enjoyable experience. By night you’ll be exploring the mysterious dungeons, slaying monsters, gathering materials and trying to defeat the end boss. By day you’ll be selling said materials to customers in your shop in exchange for money and upgrading your gear.
There’s definitely a sense of curiosity when you first enter a dungeon, what new enemies await you? What new materials will you discover? Each dungeon is randomly generated with three levels before reaching the final boss, along the way you’ll discover enemies with simple attack patterns and new materials to either sell or use to upgrade your weapons. The main gimmick of dungeons is that if you die in the dungeon you lose all the materials that you’re carrying. There are a few ways to exit the dungeon, you’ll be given a Merchant Pendant that will teleport you out of the dungeon for a price (depending on how far you are and on what dungeon). Or you can use another item that allows you to return to the position back in the dungeon for a higher price without the dungeon randomizing again.
Managing materials you’ve collected is one of the most annoying parts of exploring dungeons, you’ll be given a limited amount of space in your bag to place materials which can only be stacked to a certain amount (usually 5 - 10). The materials on the top row will stay with you regardless of if you die in the dungeon or not, however you’ll lose the rest. You’ll realise that there’s no possible way of picking up every material that you come across so managing your space becomes problematic. There wasn’t ever a backpack upgrade so you’ll have to resist the urge to pick up everything you see. This forces the player to decide which materials they want to take with them and usually boils down to which is the most valuable.
The combat isn’t anything that advance, you’ll be given a sword and a bow as your weapons and your able to dodge roll. The monsters that you come across only have one attack so defeating them comes down to learning when they’re vulnerable, the attacks get a bit more complicated as you progress to new dungeons but nothing that complex. Upgrading your weapons with materials and money back at the town can make them inflict fire, poison or electric damage depending on what dungeon you’re in. These elemental attacks don’t seem to have weaknesses or strengths against other elemental monsters which poses the question of why bother with it in the first place?
Despite how enjoyable the first few dungeons were to explore, there was a point where I could see a routine developing every time that I would unlock a new dungeon. I’d spend a few runs gathering materials to upgrade armour and to sell, I’d then just beeline it to the final boss. The dungeon doesn’t try to encourage you to explore after you’ve bought everything that’s available to you, so I saw no point in staying in the same dungeon for longer than I needed to.
The mini-bosses that you’ll encounter before moving on to the next level aren’t that great, they were more annoying than enjoyable to defeat. The end bosses however were a lot more creative and fit the style of each dungeon very well. Each one has a set of different attacks that you’ll have to learn can can be challenging even if you have upgraded all of your gear. However oddly enough the final boss of the game was a joke, I was able to defeat him extremely easily on my first try without developing a strategy.
The shopkeeping side of Moonlighter is a nice change of pace compared to exploring dungeons. With the materials that you’ve acquired, you’ll be able to sell them to customers in your shop. Selling these items comes with a twist however, you’ll need to estimate the price for how much you think the item is worth and then increase or decrease it depending on the customers’ reaction. Luckily you have a handy book that keeps track of what prices are too steep or too cheap when a customer purchases or complains about an item. This does create a rather tedious trial and error mechanic that can be more annoying later in the game when you need a lot of money.
Another thing to keep in mind is the demand on items, selling a lot of an item will decrease it’s value if you’ve sold an abundant amount of it and customers won’t be willing to buy it for the neutral price. But on the other hand, customers will pay more for an item that is in high demand that you haven’t sold much of. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t record the prices for higher or lower demand on items, only when the item is in neutral will you record the best sale which can be rather annoying when a lot of items are in high or low demand
As you progress further you’ll be able to buy upgrades to your shop to increase the number of items you can put on sale at once, more storage space, a better bed to increase your health etc. It definitely felt like I was progressing not just with unlocking more dungeons but with upgrading my shop to make it better and to acquire more money. Unfortunately, the novelty of owning a shop wears out and becomes more of a hindrance as you progress. What was once an enjoyable experience becomes more time-consuming and mundane due to how repetitive selling items got. Despite upgrading your shop to make it better, the core mechanic of being a shopkeeper isn’t expanded enough to keep it interesting throughout the entire game.
🎧Music & Sound
The soundtrack throughout Moonlighter is very distinctive and sets the atmosphere for each dungeon when you first enter it. There was always a sense of urgency and intensity when fighting bosses that made defeating the bosses a lot more satisfying when you beat them.
🎨Graphics
As to be expected, the pixel art throughout this game is beautifully designed. Each dungeon has it’s own theme whether it be fire, electric or jungle. The enemies suited the environments to an outstanding level and really made each dungeon feel unique in its own way.
💭Closing Thoughts
There’s no doubt that I enjoyed the majority of my time with Moonlighter, from exploring dungeons, gathering materials and slaying monsters to being a shopkeeper and earning money. However, there was definitely a cutoff point where the novelty of the core mechanics wore off and became more annoying than enjoyable. However, I would still recommend this product despite this.
This product was reviewed using a free key provided by the Developers
Follow our curator page, OCG-Curations, if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.

Although engaging and fresh at first, the game became fairly repetitive after sinking a couple hours in. Mechanistically the game does nothing wrong, but also fails to innovate and keep a nice pace of new content and features as you go through the story and unlock more and more things. The difficulty level also drops down dramatically after the first few hours, along with exponentially larger and easier amounts of money obtained in-game, making everything else fairly easy. It's a fun game and certainly worth playing, but lacks much, if any replay value. I still had a good fun going through the dungeons and slaying bosses

And this makes Review #50!
A young merchant yearns to explore the mysteries of the dungeons and become a hero, all while managing his shop and helping his hometown thrive once again, since it’s starting to become a ghost town. Will the hero succeed? Should you bother with this adventure? Well, here’s my take on Moonlighter.
The GoodShop Upgrades expands on it’s overall usage.
When you start using the shop, the first few times, you’ll notice that it functions in a basic manner and are limited on how many items you call sell at a time. Once you start upgrading the shop itself, not only will you be able to sell more items, but you’ll be able to start taking in requests from customers, asking for either a specific item or defeat certain monsters for notes.
You’ll also have a hired assistant sell your items for you while you go through the dungeons and decorate the shop to give you some extra bonuses at the end of the work day. Of course, as you upgrade, you’ll start to have thieves enter your shop, so you’ll have them to keep a watch for, and all this is not counting the other purchases you can make to upgrade the village or the smaller things in your shop.
The BadBummer Calendar doesn’t keep track of your progress.
In your Inventory/Journal, you’ll have a section that is your Calendar. This is used to keep track of all the requests that you have taken from the customers in the shop and when they are due… and that’s it.
Because of this, it makes the Calendar very under utilized in the game. Some suggestions to make it more useful could have been to show how much gold you earned at the shop that day or how far you progressed in the dungeons. If the Calendar did that, I’m sure it would see much more usage.
The UglyNo Bestiary available in the game.
For a game such as this one, where you go scavenge for artifacts & items and sell them, it’s rather surprising to not have a Bestiary available.
(For those not sure, Bestiary is basically an encyclopedia on all the enemies that you came across and defeated, and gives you info and items it might drop.)
Now, not having one doesn’t make the game any difficult or anything like that, but once you start taking on requests, the Bestiary could help the player in finding out if monsters drop such items or not.
Moonlighter is a charming and fun game that I would recommend without any problem. If you are interested in a dungeon crawler game with a side of shop management, give this game a go.
Developers (Headquarters)
Digital Sun (Valencia, Spain)

Moonlighter is a top-down dungeon crawler with roguelite element. Player plays as Will the merchant, the moonlighter. In order to make a living in the Rynoka, he has to take on the role of Moonlighter, diving into five different dungeons and battling various dangerous foes in pursuit for treasures.
The gameplay is pretty straight forward: enter a randomly-generated maze, kill and loot everything, proceed until you meet the boss. Combat is simple as well. Learn what your enemies are capable of, hit and dodge at the right moment. The roguelite element forces you to understand the limit of your own skill. If greed does not bother you, this won`t be a problem. Retrieve wisely and enjoy what you have at hand, or perish along with everything you earn during the run. Afteral, the mods is rich in the game, letting alone the combination. I recommend to progress the game slowly. Whenever you encounter a tough situation you can`t deal with right away, just run. This is not cowardice. It is wise to live another day to improve yourself then go back.
I adore the art style when it first released. It handled perfectly with the extreme boundary of pixel graphic, eluding your knowledge to what is pixel and 3D. Each world is built in a somehow cute artstyle, and the animation makes me genuinely want to visit such places if they really exists. In the village I could feel the cool breeze blowing through me while I gaze upon the clean little plain; the golem dungeon has a tone of ruins, an atmosphere of untimely august with remaining golems guarding the ancient knowledge loyally; the forest dungeon feels vibrant. You can even see the rustling of little creatures at the background. Everything seems lively unlike all the dungeons. Its is their home and they are happy to live within; the desert dungeon makes me feel blazing hot even though its not real. The enemies here are not the only threats. The occasion lava pool could harm you at the most unexpected; as for the last tech dungeon I could not give an opinion without my subjective judgement --Too Many God Damn Electricity!!
For the cons, firstly there is no stat to level up, only your armour and weaponry. As a result, if you feel like certain parts of the dungeon are tough, just go back and upgrade you arsenal. That`s being said, I think the weapon types in the game aren`t enough. Traditional cold weapons like axes, claws are absent, and the range weapon is just bow and arrow only. I would really love to see some magical weaponry or even guns adding in the game since all the worlds are built upon different technology levels. Secondly the dungeons quickly becomes tedious after the initial run. This is the common flaw of roguelite game. First impression is one and all. Even though the developer did make some add-ons to spice up the experience, I still wish for more random things to refresh my playthrough. Lastly, well, it's more like a personal problem. The twenty inventory slots are not simply not enough. I understand this method enforce the evaluation of various treasure and own`s capability to move on, which is the bane of my gameplay habit. I have a serious "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder" to put everything in my bag even if it leads to little value. In another words, forcing me to choose which to discard and which to keep is a torment I cannot endure.
I WILL TAKE EVERYTHING EVEN IT MEANS MY LIFE!!!

please, please use controller. Keyboard is really hard to play, just use controller.

Great game overall. Fun dungeon crawler with rogue-lite (I hope I spelled that right) elements, with nice, responsive fighting system that emphasizes evasion over tanking damage. The game offers a number of weapons, each with their own fighting style. There is some variety of monsters with different attack patters, and a number of boss fights. There is a "new game plus" mode that makes the game a bit longer and a bit harder.
Difficulty is variable, personally I enjoyed it the most on "easy" difficulty, although "normal" wasn't THAT hard (just a bit too hard for me personally).
There's also a shop-keeper... mini-game? Which is also fun and allows you to change pace for a little while.
Music is nice, not transistor-nice, not bastion-nice, but generally pleasant and not annoying.
Graphics are well drawn, even though pretty simplistic.
The DLC is also fun, giving you an endless dungeon (not exactly endless but indefinitely replayable). Some achievements are pretty difficult, but it is all do-able (sadly, some take MANY tries if you're not very good with a controller, I, for one, am not).
What I didn't like was the fact there are certain unrefined, rough parts that need a bit more polish, which ruin the overall experience in certain areas. For example, boss fights are extremely short on Easy difficulty (some 30 seconds to a couple of minutes of chipping away at that health bar). But if you switch to medium or hard, it can be pretty tedious. Some bosses have several stages, most of them are just health sponges. Personally, I'd prefer several stages for each boss fight when either boss attack pattern or game arena (or both) change to some extent, extending the fight and adding variety.
Hoping to see a new game by this developer some time in the future.